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truncated cone

Think a general cone (not necessarily a circular one). If a planeintersects the lateral surface of the cone, but not the base of this cone, then the solid remaining from the cone between the intersecting plane and the plane of the base AAA is called a truncated cone. Also the name frustum (the Latin frustum = ‘piece, fragment’) is used, althouh this may mean the portion of any solid which lies between two parallel planes cutting the solid. Sometimes one sees the (wrong) variant name frustrum. As the plural form of frustum both frustums and frusta are used.

We restrict our to the frustum of cone with the cutting plane parallel to the plane of the base. The part of its surfacecontained in the intersecting plane is the other baseA′superscriptAnormal-′A^{{\prime}} of the frustum. Since the bases AAA and A′superscriptAnormal-′A^{{\prime}} are homothetic with respect to the apex of the whole cone, they are similarplanar figures. The heighthhh of the frustum is the part of the heightHHH of the whole cone between the both base planes. Denote h′:=H-hassignsuperscripthnormal-′Hhh^{{\prime}}:=H\!-\!h.

The volume of the frustum is obtained as the difference of the volumes of two cones:

One needs the term(A-A′)⁢h′AsuperscriptAnormal-′superscripthnormal-′(A\!-\!A^{{\prime}})h^{{\prime}}. The ratio of the similar areasAAA and A′superscriptAnormal-′A^{{\prime}} equals the square of the line ratio: